There's a pet store a few blocks away, down on Myrtle. The owner is a thick, middle-aged black fellow who sits on the sidewalk in the summertime, pit bull at his side. A scary creature, though I've seen it be friendly; and the puppies and kittens in the window, a litter every few weeks, invariably look bedraggled and half-tended, but never quite poorly tended. It's that kind of store -- hardscrabble, but always a few steps ahead of bleak. Only appropriate that the owner keeps pigeons on the roof. A few, probably the product of carefully arranged and tended matings, have pure white feathers; a few more have a mottling of grey and white, or even brown; and most are only grey, pigeons' pigeons, though no doubt unique in his eyes. In the evenings they fly, moving as one. If I'm walking back up Myrtle, their wings catch the alpenglow with each turn, a sleight-of-the-handful of synchronized sparks; from my apartment, above and below, they appear in silhouette. [Flickr]